Pixels
by Taliatoennien
Summary: SUMMARY: Regina teaches Henry how to type. Spoilers for assorted evens from season one, nothing too specific.


SUMMARY: Regina teaches Henry how to type. Spoilers for assorted evens from season one, nothing too specific.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of these characters, and I'm not making any money from this story.

A/N: For Rowan, who won a _Star Trek_ trivia prize. I asked her what she wanted, and she said, "would Regina angst be too obvious?"

Beta thanks in triplicate to LadyKate, for doing this on such short notice.

Pixels

by Alicia

On her first day in office as Mayor Mills, Regina broke the coffeepot.

Regina didn't drink coffee. Regina didn't even _like_ coffee. But after a few afternoon hours and one long, confusing night living in a town where everyone but her knew exactly how everything worked was enough to convince Regina that she would need her utmost acting abilities to act the part of mayor well enough to keep the power that was rightfully hers. Not that anyone could take it away. _Let them try_, Regina thought, eyes skimming the bookshelves in the pre-dawn, familiarizing herself with the office layout. It was a differently shaped palace, that was all.

The clock just visible from the window said eight fifteen. Snow White, now Mary Margaret Blanchard, had informed Regina of this before dazedly wandering off to her new apartment. So, it would be eight fifteen in the morning when Regina's desk clock matched the wall tower clock. Regina squinted back and forth, comparing the two clocks. There was more difference than had appeared at first glance. Good. She would use the extra time to start the coffee pot.

She walked over to the other window, which had a "sink" underneath and a "faucet" above the sink (so labeled in the Richard Scary book she had found abandoned in her downstairs spare bedroom sometime in the middle of the night). She turned the handle to the faucet. Water sprayed directly in her face, making her gasp and soaking her suit jacket. Sputtering and swearing, Regina turned off the water. When she turned it again, slowly, water emerged in a steady stream. Ignoring her shivers for the moment, she retrieved the pot and filled it from the faucet. It overflowed twice before Regina found the rhythm, but she managed to turn off the water, retrieve the full pot, empty it into the back of the coffee maker, and turn the switch from "off" to "on." Pleased with herself, Regina left the pot to do its work as she rummaged in the office closet for another suit jacket.

She emerged some time later, impeccably dressed, to find puddles of water all over her carpet and the Huntsman – Graham the Sheriff – holding a broken glass pot with a confused expression.

"I commanded it to make coffee," Regina said, glaring at the pot.

"You're not supposed to fill it with water first," Graham said. "It fills itself from the water system. You're just supposed to put the coffee in the top. " He opened the cabinet above the sink to reveal coffee filters in neat stacks.

_Two weeks ago I watched you help yourself to the strips of raw meat we had in the side satchels as rewards for the hunting dogs. You fed the wolf at your side with one hand while unapologetically stuffing your face with the other, and the blood ran down your beard while you glared at me to tell you that the two of you were any different._

"Didn't you know that?" Graham continued after a beat.

"We needed a new coffeepot anyway," Regina said, dismissing him with a wave of her hand. "See to it."

Graham looked confused, but only said, "Um, okay," and stepped over two puddles on his way out.

A week's time was enough for Regina to acquaint herself with the general daily work of a mayor – and the range of responsibilities of the janitor – but she realized late on a Friday afternoon that she had not yet touched her computer. It sat neatly on one side of her desk, carefully labeled floppy disks in three boxes beside and paper in the drawer below. Graham had used it when he stopped in, and he'd dropped enough information about the locations of different town records and the technology called the Internet that Regina had put together the rest of the pieces. It was odd, she mused. Her subjects had only the advantage over her that the curse gave them, and without the artificial knowledge they would stumble through this new world like she did. But she perceived them as peasants who happened to have skills she lacked, treating them with the same mixture of respect and disdain that she had used for the Mad Hatter in the old world.

"I want one of the typing books," Regina snapped at one of the schoolteachers – not Mary Margaret, someone with a class all the way on the other side of the building.

"What for?" the teacher said with a cool air.

"I want to see what I need to have reordered for you."

"We're in far greater need of new math books."

"Get. Me. A. Typing. Book."

Regina's glare of command still worked in this new world, she was pleased to note. But while the teacher was scurrying around in the back room, Regina took a ruler from the teacher's desk and silently snapped it for insubordination.

It only took a weekend for Regina to master the home row. Only an entire weekend, painstakingly typing a, s, d, f, f, t, f, r, over and over until she wanted to see how her home computer liked the old coffeepot. She had particular trouble with the letters "g" and "h." There was no logical reason for her to struggle with those particular letters. The same fingers were supposed to hit them. The same general motions. They should be no different than any others.

She narrowly missed throwing the worn typing book out the window several times, and she did rip out some of the pages. There were enough left to infuriate her, still.

After two more weeks of more or less passable performance as mayor in the office and more or less intolerable progress with the typing textbook at home, Regina had a brainstorm. What if, instead of meaningless words from a meaningless book, she were to type something that had meaning to her?

Among the possessions Regina had brought from the old world to keep under her bed was a letter from Daniel. She drew it out of its home between the pages of a hand-drawn book of herbs. The parchment was ripped, the ink almost faded to nothing. The paper held a world all its own. The high pitched voice of a young girl, explaining the way that letters make sounds. The strong hands far more equipped for brushes and reins, shakily grasping the quill and carving out one painstaking letter after another. Regina had read over the letter so many times that she was in danger of losing it, but with this new world's technology she could preserve it.

She carried the letter over to the computer in her room and carefully unfolded it on her desk beside the keyboard. She typed, "Dear Gina, for the first time in my life, I know how it feels to be home, beside you." How long had it taken Daniel to write this one sentence? And how many things had he meant that he did not have the skill to write?

Tears welled up in Regina's eyes. Turning her face away from both computer and keyboard, she let them come. They were happy tears. These were happy memories. She had her happy ending. Snow White suffered and would suffer more. Daniel was avenged. It was okay. Regina did her best to feel the happiness born of enacting the curse at last, but all she could feel was the happiness from the scent of the hay and the inexplicable sense of belonging at Daniel's side.

It took her some time to notice that she had struggled with neither the "g" nor the "h" keys.

Henry outgrew telling his mother all about his day by the time he was six, but Regina could read Henry's actions as if he still gave her full reports. Henry bouncing into the house and pleading for his cinnamon toast meant good day. Henry sulking up the stairs kicking each one as he passed meant there was a kid in his class who was about to receive a very strong lecture from the Mayor regarding the evils of bullying. Henry staying downstairs, but kicking things there, meant academically frustrating day. So when Henry drop kicked a throw pillow into Regina's potted plant, Regina said, "Pick up the pillow. Put it in the laundry. What new class are you in?"

Henry swatted the pillow a few times on his way to the hamper. Regina winced at the explosion of stuffing – janitors weren't just for work, she had discovered over the years. Henry returned and sat heavily in one of the dining room chairs, throwing his backpack on the floor. "They put me in the gifted class," he said.

Regina wasn't surprised, but she knelt beside her son and turned his face to hers. "That is a high honor," she said.

"Huh?"

Child of _this_ world and all, Henry wouldn't understand royal language. "So why are you frustrated?" she said instead.

"All the gifted kids are learning to type. And I'm the slowest one."

Regina fought the urge to laugh. Later, perhaps. "Let's go upstairs and practice," she said.

"I can use your computer?"

"I think being in the gifted class deserves your own computer. We'll shop tomorrow. For now you can use mine."

Henry took the stairs two at a time, and Regina followed at a more leisurely pace – well, leisurely compared to Henry, anyway; Cora would have had a fit about Regina's unladylike haste. By the time Regina reached her desk, Henry had her computer booted up and turned on, and had started an online video game.

Regina reached over Henry and closed the window, then opened a blank word document and told Henry to type the home row. He painstakingly pushed each letter: a, s, d, f, f, r, f, t, but stumbled when he got to "g." His progress was the same from the other end: l, k, j, j, u, j, y, but Henry couldn't quite reach the "h."

_He is my son after all_, Regina thought with a kind of numb wonder.

Then, considering she didn't want Henry to drop kick anything in her bedroom, she knelt beside him again. "I had to learn to type too, Henry," she said.

"Really?"

"Really. And you know what I learned?"

"What?"

"I learned that it's easier to type something that has meaning to you." Her words had been a bit too big. "Something you care about. Maybe a letter from someone you care about."

"No one emails me yet."

Regina made a mental note to find out all about Henry's email account. That would be tomorrow. For tonight she said, "Well, then, I'll write you a letter." She reached over Henry into her desk for a clean sheet of paper. She took a pen from the cup on the end of the desk closest to her. She made a show of spreading out the paper, then wrote, "Dear Henry, I love you. You and I belong together."

"Mooooo-oooom."

She made him type it anyway, secretly pleased with the faint grin he gave her around the roll of his eyes. And just like Regina with her own love letter, Henry struggled with neither the "g" nor the "h."


End file.
